Advanced searching

Advanced searching allows you to make your search more precise by choosing and combining which topics, names, places or dates are most relevant to your research, or by exploring archives by subject.

Key words or phrases

Use this free text box to add in whatever you are looking for, and this will look for these words in all the catalogue fields. To look for an exact phrase, with all words next to each other as you have entered them, use quotation marks e.g. “Mary Queen of Scots”. To find all the words, including when they do not appear together, use +, e.g. “Mary+Queen+of+Scots”

Title

Searches only the titles provided for archival records. This may be the title of a whole collection, series or individual item. Titles of archives are can be supplied by the cataloguer or can be the title as given in the original archival item, e.g. ‘ Maps of Scottish Railways, ‘Regional Bird Materials’, or “Diary of Thomas Cairns Livingstone, 1913”.

Creator

The person, family or organisation that is responsible for bringing the archival materials together e.g. Anna MacDonald, the Elder family, or the Arbroath Infirmary; or it can also be the author of a document or maker of an item.

Date

The dates that the items or materials within the archival collection were originally made. You can choose to look for an exact date or for a dates falling within a range.

Subject

This searches the key words or index terms added to descriptions of archive papers by the person cataloguing the collection to indicate important subjects or themes e.g. “Shinty”, “tweed”, “Education”. Note that not all possible subjects are always included, and subject indexing is not completed for all archival items that are described. Just because a subject you are looking for does not appear in this field, does not mean it does not appear in the archives.

Place

This searches the key words or index terms added to descriptions of archive papers by the person cataloguing the collection to show which geographic locations are associated with the collection. e.g. “Glasgow”, “Isle of Mull”. Note that not all possible geographic locations are always included, and place indexing is not completed for all archival items that are described. Just because a place you are looking for does not appear in this field, does not mean it does not appear in the archives.

Person

This searches the key words or index terms added to descriptions of archive papers by the person cataloguing the collection to highlight the people, organisations or families who are strongly associated with the archival papers or feature in them e.g. “Robert Louis Stevenson”, “Dewars”. Again, note that not all possible individuals are always included, and person indexing is not completed for all archival items that are described. Just because a person you are looking for does not appear in this field, does not mean the person does not appear in the archives.

It can also be helpful to filter your search results or look at our search tips.